Age-related changes on the mechanism to control visual attention

众所周知，搜索显示器上的干扰物在观察者搜索目标时具有干扰作用。这表明搜索显示的配置与IT设备的用户友好性和可访问性有关。明确认知功能的相关变化对界面的合理设计是非常重要的。因此，我们研究了视觉注意尤其是抑制功能的相关变化。采用了两种方法：视觉搜索任务和问卷调查法。在视觉搜索任务中，使用与目标检测无关的起始干扰刺激。结果表明，当存在不相关刺激时，老年人检测任务的灵敏度（d′）降低。这表明，由于注意力的外源性捕获，干扰物的出现使老年人的注意力难以集中。此外，采用记忆容量和注意功能问卷对老年人认知功能主客观评价的关系进行了研究。对于本研究中两种不同任务的结果，一个可能的解释是中枢执行功能的相关恶化。

It is well known that the distracters on search display have an interference effect when the observer searched a target. This indicates that the configuration of search display has relation with the userfriendliness and the accessibility of IT devices. It is very important for appropriate design of interfaces to clarify agerelated changes in cognitive functions. Therefore, we investigated the agerelated changes on visual attention, especially inhibition function. Two approaches were adopted : a visual search task and a questionnaire method. In the visual search task, an onset distracter stimulus which was irrelevant for detecting a target was used. The result showed that a sensitivity of detection task (d') for elderly people decreased when an irrelevant stimulus was presented. This indicated that the focusing of attention became difficult for the elderly people by the onset distracter because of capture of attention exogenously. Furthermore, the relationship between the subjective and the objective evaluation of cognitive function in elderly people were examined by using the questionnaire involving memory capacity and attention function. A possible explanation for the results of both different tasks in this study is the agerelated deterioration of central executive function.